Good morning. Hello. How are you? #472
Finishing the Sparks run, The OnlyFans saga comes to a conclusion, Mackenzie Scott, Afghanistan,
Good morning! Hello. How are you? Doing okay over here. It’s Thursday. Probably means grammy sleepover day, so, that is nice. Day 14 without nicotine. Running out of mints but still need more mints. Might make a quick run to the store today. We had a good rainstorm last night so the plants are happy. Work meetings die down on Thursday. I am mostly over my work challenge, having digested and absorbed and made a plan. Back on a mostly even keel of the unending daily routine. Thank you for your kind words yesterday.
We had Indian delivered last night, it was delicious. And I love how delivery drivers work now. God, they are probably people who love the pandemic more than anyone. They just totally don’t interact with you at all anymore. Is this the case everywhere else? Here, not a single delivery driver rings your bell anymore, or risks in any way talking to seeing you. What they do is they drive up, put the food at the door, get back into their car, drive a bit away, then use the app to text you and tell you your food is here. It’s fantastic. What a great job, so little interaction with customers. That is right up my alley maybe I’ll become a delivery driver. Also, of course, as an anti-social customer, I love it. No one involved in this transaction actually wants to speak to one another, and now, thanks to the pandemic, they don’t have to. It’s the best.
I am, right at this moment, on the final Sparks album, album # 27. I did them slightly out of order, so I am listening to the 2013 live album right now, Two Hands One Mouth. I thought it would make more sense to listen to all of the albums before I listened to the live album, so I put it last, but I am just now realizing that, duh, that makes no sense since, in 2013, they would probably not play live songs they wrote in 2015. Whoops. Oh well, what’s done is done.
(There’s a guy in the audience to one song on the album, recorded in France, who is shouting “Merci Beaucoup!” over and over and I will never get over how funny it is that the French scream this in casual rock situations, like an American shouting “Thank you very much!” at a rock show.)
Ironically, my least favorite of all 26 studio albums was probably the Annette soundtrack. My favorite was probably Music You Can Dance To.
Man. I am so ready to listen to something else. I got new Lorde and new Damon & Naomi to listen to, a new Jason Pierce collaboration 12” and the new Big Red Machine. Plus tomorrow’s Friday, so maybe a couple more things. Exciting, exciting.
Also what is with Lorde and Billie Eilish both shedding their moody garb and demeanor and wearing yellow and singing about being happy? One can’t help but wonder if being young and beautiful and fabulously wealthy and famous doesn’t, in fact, bring happiness. I am starting to doubt the puritans who say money can’t buy happiness. Just look at Billie.
Oh also I forgot to mention that Lorde’s deluxe album came in a biodegradable sleeve. With a sticker on it, telling you that it is biodegradable. It is very crinkly. I’ll probably need to put it into another sleeve to protect it. And of course I have to keep it. Because of the sticker. This seems mock-worthy, but also the entire record industry needs to switch to biodegradable bags, so if Lorde can help kickstart that industry, get a bit of economics of scale going, get the price down, this would be a good thing.
Yesterday, I left you guys at just before 9 AM, and went upstairs and got Jane out of her room for breakfast time. And I walked into her bedroom and she was laying on her bed, face up, wide-eyed, and as soon as I came into the room, she said “YES. It’s WEDNESDAY. WEDNESDAYS ARE SO FUN. YAY.” She had so much enthusiasm for Wednesday it was really inspiring. Cheered me right up. It was amazing. She was very good at bedtime yesterday too, we had a lovely time.
So, in yet another crazy twist and turn of the OnlyFans saga, yesterday they announced lol, nope, never mind, we’re not going to ban porn anymore. Just kidding! Well, they didn’t say “just kidding,” they said they had “obtained the necessary re-assurances from our banking partners.” So, yay. Good for them. Rex has offered up (though not endorsed) the requisite conspiracy theory, that it was all a publicity stunt. I suspect the banks realized they could lose, oh, you know, a billion dollars a year or so of banking fees and maybe wised up a bit. Who knows. We may never know. What a crazy journey. I would read a whole book about it. Briana sent over an interesting article summarizing the religious right’s new digital anti porn tactics, which have definitely played a part.
I can’t believe I wrote about this for, like, four days straight only to have it go away completely. But, then, maybe this is evidence that occasionally justice prevails and the world does something reasonable and good? Maybe? Kinda weird place for the universe to send us a sign, but I’ll take it.
Nic Fit is a fashion house? Maybe? I don’t know. But they posted these photos of Spiritualized from right before Kate left the band, just as Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space came out. I am deeply familiar with the first one, that you see in this email, but there are four more outtakes from the shoot here that I have never, ever seen before, and I could have sworn I’ve seen every single bit of promotional material from this album. It was very exciting yesterday to discover these. Like when someone sends you a great photo of you and your friends from like twenty years ago that you have never seen.
The Afghanistan withdrawal seems to be going competently now, which is good, I guess. But we still have a long way to go in the next five days. The New York Times reports this morning that we have gotten 82,000 Afghans out out of the estimated 250,000 who helped us. That’s… not good. And it seems like we only have 5 days left with this hard withdrawal.
But more than that I fear that the discourse is moving towards a numbers count, like a thermometer at a local charity’s fundraiser. Get that number all the way to the top and we did it! yay us! no harm no foul! The problem with this, of course, are the millions and millions of women who are left behind. It will not be okay no matter what, they will not be okay no matter how close we get to the 250,000 number in the next week, and it is deeply distressing to see the media subtly frame the situation in this way. We do occasionally get reports about the Taliban’s inconsistent messaging on “the woman situation” but when your main message is “whoops we forgot to train our fighters to respect women our bad you should probably all stay home forever” that is probably not a good thing. I really don’t consider myself a neocon or anything, but the Dems’ message of “we’ll get everyone out that helped us, this is going okay, don’t worry, and we really did need to end this bad situation” really ignores the plight of these women. It is just… too upsetting.
I have a dog whistle in politics, it’s one I can’t help, but it’s keenly attuned to every politician, of any stripe, who talks about Americans like they’re better or more important than other people. I can’t get behind that, I will never get behind it.
This is a little old but I got around to reading the Bloomberg analysis of the billions of dollars MacKenzie Scott, fka Bezos is giving away. To recap: Jeff Bezos was a tool and MacKenzie divorced him and, like a boss, took him for $60 billion or so, signed the giving pledge, and just got to work giving it away. Except she’s doing so at an insanely breakneck speed, no holds barred, writing checks where her heart takes her, giving hundreds of organizations millions of dollars each. It’s upending the world of charity. Some people are grumbling (this makes us grovel, it scares away other donors, some charities won’t know what to do with the money) and they’re not especially wrong but it seems like the good outweighs the bad here. She makes these gifts no strings attached, tells them they can use it on tech or hiring people or taking a day off. She gives a lot to professional grant-making organizations, so there is a significant trickle down effect. She didn’t make a private foundation to do all this she just does it personally. Anyway I think it’s great. More billionaires should shut up and get to the hard work of giving all of their money away.
She’s given away about $6 billion this year, about $10 billion in the last twelve months. And yet. Her wealth has increased by about $20 billion in the same amount of time. Just insane. Mackenzie needs to pick up the pace here hahahaha not every other rich person like her dumb ex who’s given away a peanut or two in that period of time.
Let’s do a mix! W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe. Volume 26. Mix of old and new. Actually I just completely re-worked this one minutes ago and added a bunch of old stuff, personal Rick classics, that have been going through my head in the last few weeks. Also there is a new Kacey Musgraves and I am very excited. She has a new profile in the Times this morning and I have it open in another tab and am very excited to read it. The deluxe vinyl edition of her new album was hella expensive. It hurt. But I wasn’t gonna choose the day of a new Kacey Musgraves album to get my vinyl problem under control. We can save that for after the nicotine and maybe, I don’t know, a DIET or something. Theres a new Saint Etienne too, and it is a new direction and I think I like it and am ready to listen to more.
Also thank you to everyone who wrote in yesterday to tell me that you listen to these mixes every day. You guys are so great. This whole thing really is such a treat. Everyone should have a small mail list of friends to whom they can confess their insecurities and rapidly receive heartwarming reassurance and confirmation. Really is a gift, thank you.
…And just now, as I finish this, I am on the last song of the last Sparks album. Congratulations, me.
how can jane's enthusiasm not be infectious?! but i have to ask: what makes her wednesdays so danged fun?
i'm all for more happy music from our pop stars. i could use it.
3 things of no consequence: 1. How does your wee child know what day it is? 2. I had to look up what fka means and now I feel dumb. 3. That arbitrarily placed section soccer ball pie chart is aesthetic anarchy. (I like it).